The Influence of Attachment Style,Self-protective Beliefs,and Feelings of Rejection on the Decline and Growth of Trust as a Function of Borderline Personality Disorder Trait Count

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is associated with paradoxical trust behaviours, specifically a faster rate of trust growth in the face of trust violations. The current study set out to understand whether attachment style, self-protective beliefs, and feelings of rejection underpin this pattern. Young adults (N=234) played a 15-round trust game in which partner cooperation was varied to create three phases of trust: formation, dissolution, and restoration. Discontinuous growth modelling was employed to observe whether the effect of BPD trait count on trust levels and growth is moderated by fearful or preoccupied attachment style, self-protective beliefs, and feelings of rejection. Results suggest that the slower rate of trust formation associated with BPD trait count was accounted for by feelings of rejection or self-protective beliefs, both of which predicted a slower rate of trust growth. The faster rate of trust growth in response to trust violations associated with BPD trait count was no longer significant after self-protective beliefs were accounted for. Interventions targeting self-protective beliefs and feelings of rejection may address the trust-based interpersonal difficulties associated with BPD.

     

Color affects perceived odor intensity

In Experiment 1, some odorous solutions (e.g., strawberry) were rated as smelling stronger when colored (e.g., red) than when colorless. Experiment 2 showed this effect to be due to a perceptual change rather than a response to experimental demand characteristics. Experiment 3 showed that the color-induced increase in odor intensity is not due to subjects' preexperimental experience with particular color-odor combinations, because the increase occurred with novel ones. We conclude that color induces a weak olfactory percept that combines with odorant-induced percepts. The effect may be due to conditioning or may be the result of residual intersensory neural connections left over from infancy.     

Crossed Aphasia in a Dextral: A Test of the Alexander–Annett Theory of Anomalous Organization of Brain Function

A case of crossed aphasia is presented in a strongly right-handed 77-year-old white female without history of familial sinistrality or prior neurological illness. She developed a right middle cerebral artery infarction documented by CT and accompanied by obvious clinical signs of a conduction aphasia with some resolution but continuing obvious language defect after 9 weeks in rehabilitation. Comprehensive neuropsychological and aphasia testing suggested anomalous lateralization of phonologic-output aspects of language, emotional prosody, motor planning and body schema modules with usual lateralization of lexical–semantic aspects of language and visuo-spatial functions. Experimental validation of the uncrossed lexical–semantic aspects of language using tachistoscope methods found support for the Alexander–Annett theory that different aspects of language can be dissociated in their lateralization. The subject had difficulty identifying a semantic associate of a picture presented to the left visual field (7 errors out of 10) relative to right visual field presentation (2 errors out of 10). Bilateral free naming errors (6 and 5 errors in the left and right visual fields, respectively) occurred consistent with the aphasic presentation, suggesting phonologic-output dysfunction from the right cerebral vascular accident. Implications of the results for aphasia classification are discussed.     

Response acquisition under targeted percentile schedules: a continuing quandary for molar models of operant behavior.

The number of responses rats made in a "run" of consecutive left-lever presses, prior to a trial-ending right-lever press, was differentiated using a targeted percentile procedure. Under the nondifferential baseline, reinforcement was provided with a probability of .33 at the end of a trial, irrespective of the run on that trial. Most of the 30 subjects made short runs under these conditions, with the mean for the group around three. A targeted percentile schedule was next used to differentiate run length around the target value of 12. The current run was reinforced if it was nearer the target than 67% of those runs in the last 24 trials that were on the same side of the target as the current run. Programming reinforcement in this way held overall reinforcement probability per trial constant at .33 while providing reinforcement differentially with respect to runs more closely approximating the target of 12. The mean run for the group under this procedure increased to approximately 10. Runs approaching the target length were acquired even though differentiated responding produced the same probability of reinforcement per trial, decreased the probability of reinforcement per response, did not increase overall reinforcement rate, and generally substantially reduced it (i.e., in only a few instances did response rate increase sufficiently to compensate for the increase in the number of responses per trial). Models of behavior predicated solely on molar reinforcement contingencies all predict that runs should remain short throughout this experiment, because such runs promote both the most frequent reinforcement and the greatest reinforcement per press. To the contrary, 29 of 30 subjects emitted runs in the vicinity of the target, driving down reinforcement rate while greatly increasing the number of presses per pellet. These results illustrate the powerful effects of local reinforcement contingencies in changing behavior, and in doing so underscore a need for more dynamic quantitative formulations of operant behavior to supplement or supplant the currently prevalent static ones.